


deemed and delivered a crime

by LuckyDiceKirby



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Dramatic Irony, F/F, coda to a crack in the slab
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 09:26:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15433995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuckyDiceKirby/pseuds/LuckyDiceKirby
Summary: But tonight, after she returned from Stilton Manor, Emily won’t stop sneaking glances at her whenever she thinks that Billie isn’t looking. It’s different than the appreciative looks she’s given Meagan Foster ever since they left Dunwall. There’s a strangeness there, an uneasiness, something almost like fear.





	deemed and delivered a crime

**Author's Note:**

> I am forever chipping away at my Big Long Post-Doto fic, but I took a break from it so that I could actually finish something for once. The thing about this ship is, it's incredibly fraught and incredibly good and deserves way more content than it has, thanks for coming to my TED talk.
> 
> Title from Which Witch by Florence + the Machine.

They’ve been dancing around this thing between them for weeks. Maybe the entire time Emily’s been here on the _Dreadful Wale_. 

The problem is that Emily Kaldwin’s got a spine. Billie wasn’t sure that she would. She’s got a spine, a will, and a fierceness in her eyes that Billie can’t look away from. She has no interest in being saved. What she has an interest in is clawing her way back to the throne by any means necessary. Billie’s seen the blood under her fingernails and the Mark on her hand, a shuddering reminder that the Outsider still hasn’t learned how to mind his own damn business.

She has an interest in Billie, too, but mostly both of them have been ignoring it. There’s more important shit going on. Billie gets that. She’s grateful, in a way. Because if Emily asks, if Emily comes knocking on her door in the middle of the night, Billie will have to decide what to do. To say no, and come up with a good reason why not, a reason that isn’t _I stood there behind my mask and I watched your mother die_. Or even worse: Billie might say yes.

She doesn’t need to live with any more of her mistakes. 

But tonight, after she returned from Stilton Manor, Emily won’t stop sneaking glances at her whenever she thinks that Billie isn’t looking. It’s different than the appreciative looks she’s given Meagan Foster ever since they left Dunwall. There’s a strangeness there, an uneasiness, something almost like fear. 

“It looks like you’ve caught the eye of an Empress,” Aramis tells her as they stand at the prow of the ship, whiskeys in hand. He’s never been all that good at teasing, but he tries, in his own gruff way. “Going to do something about that?”

“We can’t all be like you and your duke,” Billie says. She regrets it as soon as the words are out, but Aramis only sighs, wistful without sorrow. They’re two of a kind, Aramis and Billie. They both have a grief at the center of them, the thing that made them who they are. 

“Maybe so. But she hasn’t stopped looking at you all night, has she?”

Billie glances back over her shoulder in time to see Emily turning her face away. She’s perched on a railing outside the bridge, doing her best impression of someone gazing thoughtfully out at the sea.

“No,” Billie says with a sigh. “She hasn’t. It’s not a good idea. She’ll be the Empress of the Isles again when this is all over, and I’ll still be a smuggler.”

“There are plenty of respectable uses for a ship like this. I could certainly find a few.”

“Trading silver isn’t for me, Aramis. But I appreciate the offer.” 

Meagan Foster could become respectable, if she really wanted, but it would never change who she is underneath, the same person she’s always been: Billie Lurk, wearing another skin as if she could someday become it. But she can’t. She can do everything in her power to help Jessamine Kaldwin’s daughter and it will still change nothing. 

Billie always thought that she’d become Daud someday. She used to think it with hope, and then with dread, but it’s true either way. Daud did everything he could to fix his mistakes. Billie knew in those final days. She watched him and reported everything back to Delilah, sick to her stomach with what she was going to do, and she knew that he wouldn’t ever fix anything.

Aramis shrugs, and doesn’t push. He never pushes. It’s one of the things Billie likes about him.

She leaves him alone with thoughts of his duke and goes to talk to her Empress. Something’s wrong. If Billie knew what was good for her she’d leave it alone. But she never has.

Billie clambers her way up to the bridge, not bothering to take the stairs. Emily jerks a little when she climbs up to sit next to her, even though she was watching Billie the whole time.

“Alright. What’s got you so spooked?”

Emily shakes her head. “It’s nothing.”

“I hope you’re usually a better liar than that. Otherwise, Dunwall really is doomed.”

Emily snorts. “I do alright.”

Billie digs her cigars out of her jacket. She offers one to Emily, and after a moment she takes it. “These always used to make me think of my father,” Emily says. “Mother said she hated it when he smoked. Sometimes I’d catch him at it, and he’d say it would be our secret. He stopped, after.”

Billie focuses on lighting the match. “So they only used to make you think of your father. And now?”

Emily’s eyes catch and hold on Billie’s hand around her cigar as she lights it. “These days, mostly you. I guess I’ve been trying not to think about him too much.”

She leans forward when Billie offers her a light, and breathes in deep. She doesn’t cough, either.

Emily rolls her eyes when she sees the look Billie is giving her. “Don’t worry,” she says, “this isn’t the first time I’ve smoked.”

They sit in silence for a moment, the _Wale_ rising and falling along with the waves. It would almost be peaceful, if Emily wasn’t doing her best to hide how she’s trying to vibrate out of her skin, like it just doesn’t fit her anymore. Billie can understand that. 

“Meagan.”

Billie flicks a bit of ash off the end of her cigar, and raises an eyebrow.

Emily darts a glance at her, and then looks away just as quickly, eyes turned back towards the sea. “Do you ever...you said, before, that you used to run with a bad crowd.”

“Yeah.”

“What if you could go back and change it? Make a different choice? Would you?”

When Billie looks back at her now, Emily doesn’t flinch. There’s an earnestness in her expression that would have been stamped out of her years ago, if she hadn’t grown up in a palace. 

“You can’t turn back the clock, princess. That’s not how any of this works.”

Emily sucks in a mouthful of smoke and lets it go in a long, slow breath. “We don’t know that,” she says, voice rough with the smoke or something else. “You know I can do things that I shouldn’t be able to.”

Billie does. And she knows that Daud could slow time, stop it, but he could never reverse it, no matter how much he wanted to. “The past is something you live with, Emily. That’s all.”

“But if you _could_ \--”

“My past made me who I am.” Deirdre, Daud, all the blood Billie Lurk left behind her--who knows who she’d be without it. Dead, probably. It’s all she ever expected to be. “I know better than to turn my back on it.”

Or she should. But here she is, playing Meagan Foster, acting like she can be--what, the Empress’s confidant?

She’s been thinking about it. Telling Emily the truth. It’s a bad idea. It might get her killed. But if she keeps lying, then is she really any better than Daud? Anything more than what she proved herself to be in that life, a traitor and a liar?

Emily’s angry, now, which at least is something Billie understands. “I would give _anything_ to bring my mother back.”

“It doesn’t matter what you _want_. That’s what you can never learn when you live your life in a tower, higher than the rest of us. This is the world we’ve got. It’s up to us to live in it.”

Emily just looks at her, and for a moment her own mask must slip, because Billie can see what she’s been hiding underneath: a girl who’s lost and scared and has the fate of an empire resting on her shoulders.

Billie puts a hand on her arm without thinking. Emily’s eyes go wide, that same uncertain look, but before Billie can pull back Emily has a hand pressed down against Billie’s, keeping it there. 

For a second neither of them move, a moment frozen in time. Then Emily lets go, and she reaches out and puts her hand against Billie’s cheek, thumb pressed right under her eye. 

“You’re staring,” Billie says, because it’s true and because she has to say something. They’re close, breathing in the same air, the same salt on their tongues. 

Emily looks like someone’s cut her open. “Sorry,” she says, and she moves her thumb, the smallest caress, soft on the skin under Billie’s eye. “I’m sorry. I just—”

Billie kisses her. Whatever the Empress wants to tell her is lost between their mouths. It doesn’t matter. Whatever secret’s she’s keeping, Billie can beat. 

They’ve both dropped their cigars, which is stupid and a waste, but Emily has both her hands in Billie’s hair now, kissing her like she’ll drown if she stops.

Billie feels the same way. When they stop, she’ll have to think again, and she’ll have another choice to make.

Lightning cracks, splitting the night in half. They pull apart, and the next moment the sky opens. They’re drenched in seconds.

Billie’s a sailor. She should’ve been keeping an eye on the weather. But she was distracted.

They stare at each other, soaked to the skin and shivering. Billie catches herself wondering what the rain would taste like on Emily’s lips. 

“So,” Billie says. “Do you wish you could take that back?”

“No,” Emily says, voice quiet. Billie can’t tell if she’s lying. “Do you?”

“No,” Billie says. The thing she wishes she could take back is fifteen years gone. “We can’t just sit here in this storm. I need to check the rigging.”

Emily nods. She presses another kiss to Billie’s mouth, there and gone in an instant, and then she closes her left hand around nothing and is suddenly on the ground, twenty feet below. 

“Show-off!” Billie yells down after her. Emily’s laugh floats back up as she makes her way down to the cabins below. 

Billie squeezes her eyes shut and presses her hands against her face, water dripping down her neck. She’ll tell her soon enough. She made the choice the moment she kissed her.

She can pretend to be Meagan Foster all she wants, but it’s just like Billie Lurk to go and make sure that when she does tell Emily the truth, it’s going to hurt even worse.

**Author's Note:**

> Talk to me about how extremely good Billie/Emily is on twitter or tumblr at luckydicekirby. Also, my friend and I do Dishonored podcast called [The Drunken Whalers](https://twitter.com/drunkenwhalers), if that's your kind of thing.


End file.
